🎉   Please check out our new website over at books-etc.com.

Seller
Your price
£14.99
Out of Stock

Flaws in the Ice

in search of Douglas Mawson

By (author) David Day
Format: Paperback / softback
Publisher: Scribe Publications, Australia
Published: 11th Sep 2014
Dimensions: w 153mm h 234mm d 25mm
Weight: 481g
ISBN-10: 1922247510
ISBN-13: 9781922247513
Barcode No: 9781922247513
Trade or Institutional customer? Contact us about large order quotes.
Synopsis
In Flaws in the Ice, prize-winning historian David Day searches for the real Douglas Mawson. After travelling south on his own six-week odyssey to the Antarctic, the author answers the difficult questions about Mawson that have hitherto lain buried - from questions about his intimate relationship with Lady Scott, and his leadership of the ill-fated Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14, to his conduct during the legendary trek that led to the death of his two companions. He also explores how Mawson subsequently concealed his failures and deficiencies as an expedition leader, and created for himself a heroic image that has persisted for a century. For many decades, there has been only one published, first-hand account of the expedition - the one written and orchestrated by Mawson himself. Only recently have alternative accounts become publicly available. The most important of these is the long-suppressed diary of Mawson's deputy, Cecil Madigan, who is scathing in his criticisms of Mawson's abilities, achievements, and character. At the same time, other accounts have appeared from leading members of the expedition that also challenge Mawson's official story. In this compelling and revealing new book, David Day draws upon all this new evidence, as well as on the vast research he undertook for his international history of Antarctica, and on his own experience of sailing to the Antarctic coastline where Mawson's reputation was first created. Flaws in the Ice will change perceptions of Douglas Mawson forever.

New & Used

Seller Information Condition Price
-New
Out of Stock

What Reviewers Are Saying

Submit your review
Newspapers & Magazines
'[A] briskly paced and confrontingly visceral account indicating just how tough it would have been to attempt what the Antarctic explorers set out to do' -- Simon Caterson * Saturday Age * '[A]n excellent, excoriating and long-overdue account of Mawson's 1911 -14 Antarctic expedition. -- Pater Goers * Sunday Mail * 'While Day's tone is always measured, and his claims backed up by primary sources, his icy rendering of Mawson will undoubtedly prove controversial among Antarctic historians ... but for the ordinary reader, the tale of a hero succumbing to his all-consuming monomania may prove irresistible.' -- Gillian Terzis * Weekend Australian * 'Typical David Day. Wonderfully constructed. Extraordinarily incisive. Regularly revelatory.' -- Peter FitzSimons